1. J. Michael Finley (pictured above)

J. Michael Finley gained recognition for his first on-screen role as Bart Millard, playing the lead singer of the band MercyMe in the faith-based movie I Can Only Imagine. Finley was raised in Missouri. where his father. Wayne Finley, was a Baptist minister. In a recent interview with Movieguide®, Finley said he connected with his childhood faith with I Can Only Imagine, stating, “for me this whole project … it’s kind of a coming home story.”

Finley married his wife in December of 2017 and is up for a Movieguide® Award for his performance in I Can Only Imagine. Make sure to watch the program on the Hallmark Channel on Monday, Feb. 25, at 10 p.m. Eastern, 9 p.m. Central or 10 p.m. Pacific to find out if he wins.

2. John Boyega

British actor John Boyega starred as Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Boyega’s parents, Samson and Abigail, immigrated from Nigeria to London, England, where they raised John and his siblings, Blessing and Grace. Boyega’s father is a Pentecostal preacher, and his mother works with the disabled. For a time, Boyega strayed from his faith, but returned with a renewed sense of peace. The actor has opened up about how his parents implemented prayer in his childhood.

Currently, John is gearing up to produce a new movie called God Is Good and is filming the next Star Wars movie, directed by J.J. Abrams.

Click here to read the rest of this story from our content partners at Movieguide®.

New evidence suggests there’s a link between teenage suicide and social media use.

From 2007 through 2015, suicide rates doubled among teenage girls, reaching a 40-year high. Among teenage boys, they rose by 30 percent.

At the same time, social media use has exploded.

For example, the Pew Research Center found 90 percent of people age 18-29 now use social media compared to just 12 percent 10 years earlier.

According to a study in the November issue of Clinical Psychological Science, teenagers spending five hours a day on social media were 70 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts than those reporting only one hour of daily use.

So what are parents to do?

While there isn’t one perfect solution for parents, there are helpful tips that can protect your children from these negative influences.

Here are a few:

1. Enact parental controls on your children’s devices, computers, and your home TV.
2. Engage with your children about the dangers that come with being on social media. Just as you’d talk about safety while driving, show them safety measures you put in place while online, such as not talking to strangers or giving out your personal information. Also, discuss the dangers of cyberbullying.
3. Show your children by example that human interaction is more beneficial than texting and instant messaging. Show this by making the dinner table a “phone-free zone,” or enjoying nature together with your family.
4. Limit the amount of time you allow your children to be on their phones or tablets.
5. When it comes to consuming entertainment, keep movies and TV a communal family experience instead of individual experiences that separate children from their parents, and parents from the children.
6. Read and implement: THE MEDIA WISE FAMILY and THE CULTURE WISE FAMILY

This article originally appeared on Movieguide®. Find out what God’s doing in Hollywood!

The Single Moms Club is a Tyler Perry movie about the lives of five single mothers who bond together. The film has mediocre acting but some nice elements, though it doesn’t have the strong Christian elements Perry included in his earlier movies.

Jan (Wendi McLendon-Covey) is a successful businesswoman who’s also decided to raise a child on her own. Jan goes to a meeting with the principal of her child’s school and meets four other mothers with their own stories.

Hillary (Amy Smart) is in the midst of a divorce, having three children to take care of but not knowing how. At the same, May (Nia Long) has been raising a child by herself for some time, as her husband has been out of the picture. Lytia (Cocoa Brown) works at Waffle House and has several children, two of whom are in prison while she tries to protect the younger three from the same fate. Esperanza (Zulay Henao) has a child with a man who has married another woman but is still paying for all of Esperanza’s expenses along with their child’s.

The principal has called each mom because their children have acted up by tagging the walls of the school. The principal tells the moms that the prestigious school requires the parents to get involved while the children are disciplined after such incidents.

The moms show up at Hillary’s house. Seeing that Hillary’s breaking down after her divorce, they decide to form a club to support each other.

In each situation, the moms have become the parent who raises their children or child. What they find out is that, even though they come from different socio-economic backgrounds, they all deal with the same issues.

The Single Moms Club has some nice elements. However, it doesn’t have enough direct conflict. Also, the child actors could have used better direction. That said, the movie concerns itself with the increase of single mothers in our society. It acknowledges that this scenario isn’t preferred in any way, shape or form. Also, the mothers in the movie do have great hearts for their children and their children’s needs.

In the story, the women find men to help fill the position of father for their children. However, The Single Moms Club contains some lewd dialogue and no really overt Christian content like earlier Tyler Perry movies.

The Single Moms Club could have been much better.

This article originally appeared on .

The July 20 issue of TV Guide announced the Disney Channel’s plans to feature a lesbian couple on a 2014 episode of their children’s sitcom, Good Luck Charlie. The article calls the episode “groundbreaking” and refers to Disney as “testing the water” with content that many Americans would label as immoral.

We strongly encourage Disney to not chase the whims of political correctness and instead to simply “Be Disney.” 

Disney represents good, fun and wholesome. Millions do not flock to Disneyland so they can experience edginess or groundbreaking politically correctness. No, they go because Disneyland is good, fun and wholesome.

Every parent wants to find movies and television programs they feel good about letting their children watch. There simply has been no greater studio than Disney to deliver great stories for the whole family. It’s no wonder that Movieguide has handed out more Best Family Movie awards to Disney than any other studio.  That’s because they are Disney, and Disney is good, fun and wholesome.

Yet it’s a disappointment to millions of Americans that Disney would choose to become a groundbreaker in immorality. New concepts of morality have had a very negative impact on marriage, families, and children. Instead of becoming a leader in political correctness, we encourage Disney to hold on to their title as the leader in good, fun and wholesome.

It will also be good for business, that’s for sure.  The research shows time and again that movies and programs that have moral content (though some consider old fashioned) actually make MORE money at the box office and on television than their more raunchier and politically correct competition. That’s because most people want the kind of programs that Disney has become legendary in creating.

We hope Disney realizes the legacy and, yes, the obligation, that they have to the millions of parents around the world that want Disney to simply be Disney.

We will know the future of Disney by whether they elect to air this episode on the Disney Channel or whether they choose to stand with millions who look to Disney to give us the good, the fun and the wholesome.

Jobs is a biographical movie based on the life of technological icon and founder of Apple Computers Steve Jobs. Spanning from 1971 to 2001, with Ashton Kutcher playing the title role, Jobs tries to show the passion and motivation behind the complex innovator.

In the 1970s, Jobs, a college dropout, is trying to figure out his life. Looking for purpose, he experiments with drugs and even travels to India, only to find himself working for an intolerable video-game maker.

When his childhood friend Steve Wozniak (aka Woz) shows Jobs his new computer board, Jobs sees the potential in it. Together, he and Woz form a small team, building computer boards and selling them. They call their new little company Apple. Before long, Jobs finds an investor to give their startup company the proper financial backing it needs.

In 1977, Apple launches the Apple II personal computer, and it’s a massive hit. Now at the helm of a multimillion-dollar company, Jobs finds himself facing new problems, especially with board members who see him as a liability to the company due to his tough working manner. His perfectionism and obsession with details begins to destroy longtime relationships and worries the financially minded board. Eventually, the board sees fit to kick Jobs out of Apple. Angered by their lack of vision, he ventures on his own, creating the computer company NeXT.

Years pass, and Apple is on a downward spiral. Jobs, now in a stable marriage and emotionally under control, is asked to come back to Apple, this time as interim CEO. The rest is history.

Jobs succeeds in many aspects, but it isn’t perfect. In one respect, it tries to bite off more than it can chew in terms of plot. Yet in character, it oversimplifies a complex man and only scratches the surface of his story. Though the climax may have been clear in the screenwriter’s eye, it fails to communicate to the audience emotionally.

Factually, Jobs isn’t entirely accurate, but it properly portrays Steve Jobs’ unstoppable drive and unprecedented passion for quality. The movie lacks a certain amount of emotion and heart until its final moments. However, much of this is due to the fact that Jobs led a complicated, nontransformational life until his recent death. Instead of having a large fictitious character arc, Jobs shows both the inspiring aspects and destructive elements of the inventor’s life. It also leaves the final judgment up to viewers.

Jobs has a mixed pagan worldview. Though Steve Jobs was a Buddhist in real life, this is ignored for the most part in the movie and only hints at New Age Hinduism in his early years. Still, most of the movie is pagan.

However, this is combined with some strong moral, capitalist and even pro-life sentiments. Jobs’ drive for creating quality products relates to the biblical mandate in Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (NIV). On the other hand, Jobs fails to balance this sentiment with family and friends, so the movie shows the negative effect of his obsession with work.

Steve Jobs was adopted. In the movie, he struggles with the fact that his biological parents didn’t want him. He laments in one instance, “Who has a baby and throws it away like it’s nothing?”

In Jobs, though Steve is not meant to be a role model per se, he is an inspiration for many due to his desire to change the world with the talents he had. Jobs contains plenty of foul language, some implied sexuality and drug use, so extreme caution is advised.

This article originally appeared on .

Evy Baehr, of Movieguide TV, talks to Mark Burnett and Roma Downey about their new television miniseries The Bible, which premiered Sunday on the History Channel. Find out more about The Bible and what the couple hopes to accomplish with the series.

Based on an acclaimed novel, Cloud Atlas takes place over 500 years. The group of characters from the 19th century turn out to be the same characters at several points in the 20th century and then in the future. Thus, characters, who are in love in 1849 and 1973, shift bodies and fall in love in the future. So, sometimes people who are men become women and vice versa. Sometimes the love affair is homosexual. Sometimes it is interracial. And sometimes, the same character is a villain in one generation and a hero in the next.

All of this is somewhat confusing, but not as much as it could be, because the same theme keeps repeating itself in each generation. That is, escaping the control of society and convention to be free to do your own thing—whether that includes homosexuality, smoking dope, living in a commune or standing up against the forces of injustice.

Some of the stories in Cloud Atlas are just dull and meaningless. Some actually are interesting and could have been better developed. Almost all of them have tremendous plot holes, because they are just sketches, not complete stories and rely on the other stories to get meaning. In an attempt to help viewers follow the raggedy action, there’s a comet birthmark that appears on one of the significant characters in each story.

For instance, one of the stories is about two homosexual lovers, and the comet appears on one of the man’s lower back. Another comet appears on the shoulder of a woman in the future. So, this comet indicates these characters are reincarnated versions of the same transmigrating soul. Sometimes the love affair is homosexual, and sometimes it’s unrequited, as in the story set in 1974 where a scientist says he fell in love with a woman the moment he saw her (because she was the “he” who was his homosexual lover in the previous incarnation), only to get blown up in a scheme by Big Oil to destroy nuclear power.

This isn’t good storytelling. Instead, it’s sophomoric, pseudo-intellectual cleverness posing as storytelling. The movie does have some great action scenes and some good acting, but it also has some miserable acting and some goofy makeup that makes it look like Tom Hanks in goofy makeup. We’re sorry, but Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks, even in a bald skullcap.

Sex is a recurring theme throughout the movie, even when it serves no purpose. This lewd content includes a very vivid sex scene in a future South Korea that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot since the two characters involved are just trying to escape from the one-world power which is turning women into food in a gigantic meat factory reminiscent of Soylent Green, which is referenced in the movie.

Cannibalism rears its ugly head again in a retrograde segment where Tom Hanks is part of a culture that’s been reduced to an agrarian, primitive existence, including witchcraft. By the way, this character is rescued by one of the remnant from the future civilization that collapsed.

Christians in Cloud Atlas are uniformly treated poorly, mocked and treated as bad people, including a minister who argues for slavery and a doctor who’s trying to poison a patient to steal his money. There are some vague, positive spiritual references in Cloud Atlas, but these indicate that even suicide victims, murderers and cannibals go to some better future world.

Big Oil is another villain in the future in one of the silliest plot devices in recent movie history. Of course, the crusading, willing-to-steal-to-get-her-story, biased news journalist is the hero. Some of the audience at the press screening laughed out loud.

Regrettably, the future world in Cloud Atlas is just reincarnation. It isn’t, however, Hindu reincarnation where you can come back as a cockroach or a cow. It’s a westernized, counter-culture reincarnation where you have to live your life over and over again, falling in love with the same person and trying to escape from being controlled by society. Anybody with a brain should realize that no one would want to go through the same torturous experience generation after generation, much less come back as a cow or a cockroach.

Those who see Cloud Atlas should be told the Good News that you don’t have to be reincarnated—that, if you accept Jesus Christ, you can be truly free and go to heaven, get out of the rat race and truly be yourself, the best you that God has created. Now, that truly is good news!

Cloud Atlas is a mess. It’s a self-indulgent, self-reverential pagan ode to reincarnation, transmigration of souls, selfish lustful love and ultimately escape to self-centered freedom.

The film is a cloudy, dope-induced, fuzzy philosophical nightmare. It offers no hope and a lot of tedium. Its politically correct worldview not only attacks Christianity and Christian values, it also promotes a radical liberal and libertarian, somewhat anti-capitalist definition of freedom and love. Cloud Atlas has a good cast and implies the sinfulness of man, but it’s hard to believe the average moviegoer is going to appreciate this convoluted, depressing tale.

The freedom extolled by the stories in Cloud Atlas is a freedom with no direction, a freedom without any “boundaries” or “limitations,” a self-centered freedom that really doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s the kind of hedonistic freedom that the hippie culture used to promote back in the Dark Ages, the decade that’s now called “The 60s.” Clearly, this “hippie-fried” definition of freedom, along with its hedonistic vision of love, is still with us today. It’s a freedom and love, however, devoid of any Christian, biblical notion of good and evil, faith and truth. The kind of freedom and love Jesus espouses is a freedom and love that doesn’t delight in evil or lust, but a freedom and love that extols goodness and truth and that lives by faith.  

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Alex Cross is an adaptation of the popular novel series written by best-selling novelist James Patterson. In it, Alex Cross (played by Tyler Perry) is a young homicide detective for the Detroit Police Department with a skill of hyper-observance. Because of his skill set, the FBI wants him and his family to move to Washington, D.C., so that Alex can do profiling for the FBI. This job would be more stable than being a homicide detective.

Everything changes, however, when a psychopath killer nicknamed “Picasso” (Matthew Fox) tortures a young woman to death. It’s clear to Alex this was no random murder, but a planned assassination. Also, the murderer left a clue revealing his next target: a wealthy, heavily guarded businessman.

Alex and his team arrive at the target’s place of work to protect him, but he assures Alex his security is state of the art. Alex thinks that Picasso is already in the building. While securing the complex, Alex runs into Picasso, who then sets off an explosive and narrowly escapes.

Picasso is livid that Alex foiled his assassination attempt. He sets out to make it personal. (SPOILER ALERT): During a date with his wife, Alex gets a phone call from Picasso, who’s perched on a nearby roof with a sniper rifle. Alex begins to psychologically analyze Picasso. He guesses what circumstances might have turned Picasso into a psychopath. This angers Picasso, and he decides to take it out on Alex’s wife, who is sitting with him. Alex realizes what Picasso is about to do and tries to save his wife, but he’s too late. His wife takes a shot and dies in his arms. Devastated, Alex decides to take the law into his own hands to stop Picasso before he murders anybody else. Of course, this is the classic structure of the archetypal police thriller where the police detective is forced to bend the rules to catch the criminal, whose attacks have become personal ones.

Alex Cross isn’t a great story. The characters aren’t really believable and the emotion they try to invoke feels forced. The action is exciting and has some intense moments, but it doesn’t make up for characters that lack depth. The content is about as rough as a PG-13 movie can get with some gruesome violence (including torture and cutting off of fingers), sexuality and foul language.

To make things worse, the protagonist chooses vengeance rather than justice. Though it is seen as a bad thing, he still chooses revenge and there are no consequences for his actions. This leaves viewers with a humanist worldview with bad ethical ramifications, even though there are a couple minor positive references to Christianity, including prayer and church. Movieguide advises extreme caution for Alex Cross.  

Here Comes the Boom is a highly entertaining movie about a rundown school raising money to save the music department. Here Comes the Boom, rated PG, has a lot of heart and a lot of laughter with a Christian worldview of sacrifice, Scripture and prayer, but it does have some fighting violence.

Kevin James plays Scott Voss, a public school biology teacher, who has tenure and just doesn’t care any more about teaching. Going in to pass off his duties to the music teacher, Marty, Scott finds out Marty’s wife is pregnant. At a staff meeting, the administration announces the music department will be cut because it takes $40,000 from the budget. Distressed, Scott screams out and tells everyone Marty’s wife is pregnant and that Marty needs the job.

In a drastic move, Scott promises to raise the money for Marty’s department. Teaching also how to be an American citizen, Scott meets Niko, who trains Mixed Martial Arts fighters. When Scott goes to Niko’s house to tutor him, Scott gets the brilliant idea to have Niko train him so he can fight and make money for the music department. Scott is completely out of shape and needs a lot of training, but he knows that that even the loser wins money in a fight, so all he has to do is lose.

Starting off with the basics, Scott learns how to defend himself in fights, but has to do it in pretty grungy fighting rings. Finally having some motivation, Scott is not only sacrificing himself for the music department, but he’s transforming himself into a better teacher. Each fight Scott loses, he gets hurt and goes to the school nurse, Bella (Salma Hayek), on whom Scott has always had a crush. When Bella sees the transformation in Scott to become a better teacher and fight for what’s right, she starts to support and encourage him.

Here Comes the Boom has a Christian worldview where the characters read Bible verses, pray and sacrifice themselves for others. Kevin James’ character has a complete transformation once he sacrifices himself to save the music department. Starting out as an apathetic teacher, James becomes a loving, responsible, compassionate teacher.

Here Comes the Boom teaches viewers not to give up but to fight their hardest for what’s right. There is a lot of fighting due to James’ character becoming a Mixed Martial Art fighter, but the movie is not as extreme as real UFC fighting.

Here Comes the Boom is a hilarious movie with a lot of heart and soul. The movie will have audiences rooting, cheering, clapping for victory and at the same time laughing out loud and tearing up at the inspirational moments. Here Comes the Boom has wonderful heart to it, great acting, lovable characters and high production values. 

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